25 Responses to Lost History-Tarot Cards

@ImaginaryVoncroy I share your taste in the Italian designs for game play. There are three that I particularly enjoy – the Modiano Tarocco Piedmontese (which comes in a nice BIG green box), the Swiss 1JJ (I always buy packs with the French titles – the English translations sold have ‘wands’ and ‘pentacles’), and the Fournier Marseilles.

The pack here is one of the Visconti packs – without looking for my copies, I would rule out the Cary-Yale.

Cards do not predict the future, they are only a tool for tapping the intuition. For divination anything that activates and focusses the internal intuition is sufficient from yarrow sticks to crystal balls to dots on a page.

The practical use as a set of archtypal images based on Qabalistic classics and ancient wisdom is quite separate and apart from their commercial use. A good esoteric deck is invaluable to anyone interested in Jungian psychology.

I have a Minotarot deckits never been open still brand new deck in cello. I might consider selling it if the price is right. Or I will just lock it away for another 20+ years. .Designed and self-published by Eric Provoost, the deck was issued in France in? 1982 in a limited edition of 2,000 copies. The artwork is black and white, with additional touches of brown in the Majors. The back of the deck is terra cotta with an image of a white 7-circuit labyrinth. The deck is signed and numbered

The application of tarot in psychology in this fasion is no more divination than is the use of ink blots. This application is of no interest to the sceptic – it is, frankly, mundane. Further, I would recommend that a person who needs that kind of therapy seek a professional rather than some Joe with a pack of cards.

Tarot is not just a game for me, it is a game for everybody – you can use it in different ways if you like, but it IS a game.

@Wyrdmaven You’re speaking of the game as if it were past tense. Tarot games are still played today in European countries. It is especially popular in France. Tarot did not evolve in a linear direction. Occult or divinatory Tarot, while it might be the most known, is only one branch of it. The games are another which continue to be played and the internet is slowly exposing more people to them.

with modern psychology, and the ideas that archetypes and symbols are keys to the unconsciousness, seeing in the tarot cards images some of these archeytypes, after the fact…doesnt dismiss the tarot as a tool for divination or even magic. “fortune telling” is not quite the correct term.

if you think of tarot cards as very fancy inkblots you can get the idea here

if it is a card game to you, fine. but there’s no need to insist it is a card game for everybody.

the thing about tarot is…yeah, you can trace it back to a card game and insist it is only a card game, as folks do. this video is a bit more even-tempered. the thing about “inventing” all the esoteric meaning to the cards is where the problem is. it is true that in the past few centuries, the meaning of tarot has exploded, being merged with both egyptian and hebrew occultism. but that doesnt necessarily mean that isn’t true also

Carl Jung was the first psychologist to attach importance to tarot symbolism.[21] He may have regarded the tarot cards as representing archetypes: fundamental types of persons or situations embedded in the subconscious of all human beings.

Timothy Leary has suggested that the Tarot Trump cards are a pictorial representation of human development from infant to adult, with the Fool symbolizing the newborn infant, the Magician symbolizing the stage at which an infant begins to play with artifacts, etc. In Leary’s view the Tarot Trumps may be viewed as a blueprint for the human race as it matures

In fairness, the line from the Catholic church and the Church of England is that tarot cards were indeed created for game play. Much of Europe still plays these games without any objection from the Church in those countries. The occult interpretation of tarot is objected to though.

Of course, most Christians are exposed to the same misleading media as the rest of us but in my experience, most of the anti-tarot sentiment comes from US evangelical Christianity without knowledge of the games.

This seems a common attitude, folk such as yourself come along and make wild assertions without offering any evidence for them, then when others don’t agree, you become insulting, making wild accusations with, again, nothing to back them. Finally, when it’s clear that you are unable to meet others in debate, you make a parting insult and blame your leaving on others, in this case because they are “abusers”.

My other account is philebus1972 – I haven’t used it in ages. However, why you should think that having more than one account would by symptomatic of some illness is beyond me – perhaps you could explain.